RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Irene Irving
duced by what is technically known as constructive bigamy, the marriage (if consummated) with any woman not a virgin, which, though not forbidden by ordinary law, is yet considered a sufficient declension from the ideal of marriage (cf. Lev. xxi. 13, 14) to disqualify a man for ordination. In case a man has been ordained in spite of his irregularity, his orders are valid, but he is not permitted to exercise them. Dispensation from irregularity can be granted as a rule by the pope alone — only in some exceptional cases by the bishop.
(P. HlNSCHIUSf.) Bibliography: Bingham, Origines, IV., iii.— vii. ; L. Thomassin, Vetus et nova ecclesiae discipline,, II., i. 62-63, 3 vols., Paris, 1728; F. E. a Boenninghausen, Tractatus juridicocanonicus de irregularitatibus, part iii., Miinster, 1867; P. Hinschius, Das Kirchenrecht . in Deutschland, i. 7 sqq., Berlin, 1869; E. Friedberg, Lehrbuch des Kir-
chenrechts, pp. 134 sqq., Leipsic, 1895.
IRVING, EDWARD: Scotch Presbyterian, usually
regarded as the founder of the Catholic Apostolic
Church (q.v.), whose members are
Life in popularly known as Irvingites; b. at
Scotland. Annan (15 m. e.s.e. of Dumfries), Dumfriesshire, Aug. 4, 1792; d. in Glasgow Dec. 7, 1834. At thirteen he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, and at seventeen he became a teacher of mathematics in the school at Haddington. A year later he took charge of a new academy at Kirkcaldy, but still kept up his theological studies and a more or less regular attendance on the university lectures. It was at this period that he made the acquaintance of Thomas Carlyle (the author, to be distinguished from a later apostle of the same name), who has left the most vivid picture of his development. In 1815 he passed his theological examinations and received a license to preach from the presbytery of Kirkcaldy. After three years, not very successful as a preacher, and weary of teaching, he went back to Edinburgh and occupied himself with linguistic and scientific studies. He was seriously thinking of going as a missionary to Persia when, in Oct., 1819, the position was offered him of assistant to Dr. Chalmers at St. John's, Glasgow. Overshadowed by Chalmers, and unpopular with the majority of the congregation, he was glad to exchange this position in 1822 for that of minister of the small congregation in London connected with a Scotch asylum in Hatton Garden. He received ordination at the hands of the presbytery of Annan, and took his leave of Glasgow in a remarkable sermon which called for a complete revision of the methods of Christian preaching.
In London he at once made an impression, which
was partly due to his striking appearance; he was
over six feet tall, his pale face framed
Success in in dark locks which fell almost to his
London, shoulders. No one could hear him without being conscious of a powerful and dominating personality. His flowery, rhetorical style soon attracted a large circle of hearers, for which the little church was too small. A new one was built in Regent Square, and for a time he was the fashionable preacher of London. He appealed especially to the educated classes; and it was to them that he spoke in his first published work, VI.— 3
For the Oracles of God, Four Orations. For Judgment to Come, an Argument in Nine Parts (London, 1823). The attention attracted by his writings increased his popularity, and at the same time heightened his self-consciousness; he felt himself called to be the prophet of his people, and scornfully rejected the well-meant warnings of many members of the Evangelical party.
The upheaval of the French Revolution had aroused in England a strong tendency to apocalyptic and millenarian thought, which Joins found expression in numerous writings. Drum- Among those most strongly impressed mond's by this thought was Henry Drummond Circle. (q.v.), a rich banker who had gathered around him a circle of like-minded friends, devoted to gaining general recognition for their apocalyptic views. Irving adopted the singular exegesis and the whole train of thought of Drummond's circle, which opened to him an entirely new field as a preacher of repentance. In a long discourse, later printed with enlargements (Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed of God, Glasgow, 1826), preached at the anniversary of the Continental Society in 1825, he developed these thoughts and foretold the second coming of the Lord for the year 1864. Next he published, with an introduction of 200 pages, a recasting of a work published pseudonym ously in 1816byLacunza, a Spanish ex- Jesuit, under the title The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty (London, 1827). Meantime a regular " school of the prophets " had gathered around him, who, from the end of 1826, met annually at Drummond's country-seat of Albury, near Guildford. From 1829 to 1833 they published a periodical, The Morning Watch, a Journal of Prophecy.
A sectarian tendency soon developed. Irving had been saying from 1824 on that since the fivefold office of apostles, prophets, evangelists, Rise of pastors, and teachers had disappeared Irvingites. from the Church, the Holy Ghost had deserted it. Irving thus showed an increasing tendency to depart from the principles of Scotch Presbyterianism. He now denied predestination; following the High-church teaching of Hooker, he felt himself a priest and required his people so to regard him; and toward the end of 1827 he gave utterance to Christological views which were regarded as the grossest heresy, speaking of the " sinful substance " of the body of Christ. In defense of his view, he wrote a long rhetorical treatise on the Incarnation which forms the third and fourth parts of his Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses (3 vols., London, 1828). This attitude, combined with his apocalyptic vagaries, damaged his position in London. About this time a union of prayer was formed to beseech a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and Irving's assistant, Alexander Scott, expressed the hope that the special charismata of the primitive Church might once more be bestowed in answer to these supplications. Fresh excitement was aroused by two preachingtours of Irving's through Scotland in 1828 and 1829, and in Mar., 1830, occurred the phenomena elsewhere detailed (see Catholic Apostolic Church), which were taken as a fulfilment of these hopes.
Irving: Isaacs